Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the conjunctures that have produced different political positionalities in anthropology. It examines the political and ideological formations that inform such conjunctures and which condition the demise of radical analytical paradigms and the rise of unreflective liberalism in the anthropology of migration as a case in point

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an exploration of the conjunctures that have produced different political positionalities that have prevailed in the past few decades in anthropology. It does this by suggesting that as scholars, our work is part of an intellectual labour process that is embedded in a social world which conditions distinctive practices, analytical optics and positionalities. By exploring the political and ideological formations that inform such conjunctures and therefore the intellectual labour process, this paper charts the demise of radical analytical paradigms and the rise of unreflective liberalism in the analytics that frame objects of inquiry. Anthropological interventions in the study of migration will be used as a case in point and I will suggest ultimately that the resuscitation of radical paradigms offer the most effective analytic optic in confronting the relationship between people, cross border movements, and the current conditions of crisis and adversity. Overall, this paper argues for the assertion of radical paradigms and the reinsertion of the anthropologist as a radical critic of the contemporary world.